Telecommunications systems enable two parties at a distance (a caller calling a phone, and a callee using the phone) to establish a voice call for the purposes of exchanging information, reaching agreements and taking direction, etc., through an audio-based session or a video-based session. For such sessions or calls to be established, both the caller and the callee need to be in an appropriate state of readiness to conduct the call, with the caller proposing the call through dialing the callee, and the callee accepting the call, e.g., by lifting the receiver of a fixed phone (e.g., a phone on the public switched telephone network) or pressing the answer button on a mobile phone.
However, although a mobile phone network allows a person to receive a call almost anywhere, it also means that the phone can ring when the callee is not in a position to answer the call, such as when they are in a meeting, travelling, or otherwise indisposed, leaving the caller to, at best, record a voicemail message (which is also referred to as a voicemail) on the callee's voicemail system with the hope that at some point in the future the callee will listen to it.
If an incoming call is rejected by a callee, e.g., by pressing a hang-up button or by not answering the call in time, there is generally no context given to the caller on the callee's availability or when the voicemail might be listened to. The callee may be busy for hours in meetings, but the caller doesn't know. Consequently, there can be uncertainty for the caller about when the callee will be in a position to return the call. For an urgent matter, a caller may then attempt to contact the callee using additional methods, e.g., using text messages (also referred to Short Message Service—or SMS—messages), emails, instant messaging programs or further voice calls, and these can place additional burdens on the caller and/or the callee. For example, the callee might compose and send a text message back to the caller after rejecting their incoming call; however, this requires the callee to be able to compose the text message, which may be difficult in an active meeting or while travelling. Even if the callee automatically generates a text message reply (e.g., based on a pre-prepared message text), the caller will need to have a phone capable of receiving the text message, and the text message is likely to be read by the caller only after the call is finished, in which case the caller would fail to take the information in the text message into account immediately, e.g., when recording a voicemail message, or sending their own text message.
Existing applications (e.g., Office Communicator) can provide presence information to users, to help users understand whether a person is busy before making a call. However, these systems may be limited to seeing presence information only of people within the organisation, and require both users (caller and intended callee) to use the presence system. Furthermore, such systems fail to provide callee call-by-call control over how the presence information is shared with callers.
It is desired to address or ameliorate one or more disadvantages or limitations associated with the prior art, or to at least provide a useful alternative.